During a ten-week quarter term of Advanced Composition, we asked students to consider critically the role of video and computer gaming in educational contexts. We wanted to know in particular how they might themselves design games for educational purposes, particularly the promotion of literacy and critical thinking skills. (Many of the students in this course were majoring in education.)
More specifically, the course focused on the development of writing skills around the subject of digital role-play simulations. Much class and writing time was spent in conversation with James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, which served as the primary course text. We were particularly interested in students’ working with not just games but simulations. Margaret Gredler’s work Designing and Evaluating Games and Simulations (1992) provides some useful definitional characteristics and distinctions. While we considered both digital games and simulations, our greater emphasis was on simulations, which, according to Gredler,
present more complex and ambiguous learning functions than games
typically create a problem-solving context, with no single correct “answer
depend for their outcomes, not on luck, but rather on logical consequences to actions, and
encourage participants to work in a professional manner.
Major Assignment on Gaming/Multi-modal presentation:
One major assignment were the Game Day Presentations (GDP’s), in which students, having worked closely in groups for several weeks, presented their various stances on the educational efficacy—or not—of computer/video gaming and simulation games.
Here is the assignment: Five class sessions near the end of the quarter – February 21, 23, 26, and 28, as well as March 2 – will be given over to presentations by the Comp Teams. In your presentation, you and your Team want to do the following:
Define the audience to whom you would present this material
Use classroom technology if needed, but don’t feel compelled to use it
Craft your presentation so as to illustrate some of the key general concepts that you and/or your Team developed this quarter about the educational potential of games and simulations.
Take a total of at least 25 minutes but no more than 45 minutes for your presentation. Break up the total time into segments, if you wish (each person getting ten minutes, for instance), or organize and coordinate the GDP into more of a group presentation
So you might structure this as
a guided discussion with other class members on some key concepts from the course
a demonstration of a game or simulation that your Team has developed, gathering feedback from other class members towards refining that game or simulation
a less formal presentation in which you explain how you would make such a presentation to the audience whom you have defined, what you would anticipate as their feedback, and how you would incorporate that feedback into later developments
The Course:
During a ten-week quarter term of Advanced Composition, we asked students to consider critically the role of video and computer gaming in educational contexts. We wanted to know in particular how they might themselves design games for educational purposes, particularly the promotion of literacy and critical thinking skills. (Many of the students in this course were majoring in education.)More specifically, the course focused on the development of writing skills around the subject of digital role-play simulations. Much class and writing time was spent in conversation with James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, which served as the primary course text. We were particularly interested in students’ working with not just games but simulations. Margaret Gredler’s work Designing and Evaluating Games and Simulations (1992) provides some useful definitional characteristics and distinctions. While we considered both digital games and simulations, our greater emphasis was on simulations, which, according to Gredler,
Major Assignment on Gaming/Multi-modal presentation:
One major assignment were the Game Day Presentations (GDP’s), in which students, having worked closely in groups for several weeks, presented their various stances on the educational efficacy—or not—of computer/video gaming and simulation games.Here is the assignment: Five class sessions near the end of the quarter – February 21, 23, 26, and 28, as well as March 2 – will be given over to presentations by the Comp Teams. In your presentation, you and your Team want to do the following:
So you might structure this as